“My heart has softened now that I know that the day of departure is in sight!” he said to himself, his eyes still fixed unseeingly on Petre.
“One is sure to come from home soon, sir,” said the soldier confidently.
“Yes, yes, I expect so …” assented Bologa, turning over slowly, wearily.
Varga came back later, unappeased. Apostol roused himself and said gently:
“Varga, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Forgive me!”
The lieutenant’s face cleared immediately, and he came up to him with outstretched hand.
“I am awfully sorry, old fellow. But you have changed terribly. A little while back you liked me, and we got on so well together …”
“A little while back!” sighed Bologa, his eyes full of tears.
They were kept at the hospital another ten days.
II
The train panted and sweated, climbing up between mountains the peaks of which were still capped with snow. The spring sunshine bespattered the air with powdered silver. The woods and meadows trembled under the caresses of the fiery rays. New life, young and passionate, reanimated the whole face of the earth. Only the train, laden with men and material of war, huge, grinding, puffing, seemed a monster from another world, come to defy nature’s youth. The locomotive crawled along cautiously, as if it expected some enemy to appear in its path; it wriggled along under the stolid slopes and crags like a huge snake on the look-out for imaginary dangers at each twist and turn.
In a coach reserved for officers Apostol Bologa stop’d in the corridor by an open window, drinking in thirstily the mountain view, which reminded him of the valley of the Someş and made him forget his present destination.
Suddenly the door of the compartment behind him was opened and closed noisily, and in his ear Varga’s voice said gleefully:
“Do you know, Bologa, who is on our train? You’ll never guess! General Karg! Look round, there’s Gross. He has just been telling us.”
Apostol turned round. Through the glass door of the compartment could be seen, through a haze of cigar smoke, a few officers. Gross was banteringly explaining something with violent gestures.
“He said the general talked to him about us,” continued Varga. “In fact, he swears that the general said he wanted to see us, and especially you. When one comes to think of it, it would only be the natural thing to do, for we’ve shed enough of our blood for our country. Gross has been travelling on a job with the general, so perhaps it’s true what he says.”
Bologa felt a loathing for them all, beginning with Gross. That was why he had kept away from them, and so far he had only exchanged two or three casual words with the sapper.
“Does he? That’s fine!” he said, wishing to seem interested, but his eyes were disdainful.
“I’ll tell you what I thought we’d do,” the Hussar lieutenant began again, laying an arm across Bologa’s shoulder. “If we do manage to get a word with the general, we must try to convince him that we really do deserve some sick-leave after nearly five months of hospitals and suffering. Isn’t it true? I have great faith in Karg, in spite of his being severe and pig-headed, and, the Lord be praised, we have done our duty.”
“Yes, of course, it wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Bologa, convinced that Varga’s hopes were childish, and longing to be alone again.
Varga cast a quick glance into the compartment, then, with a look of disgust, turned his back on it.
“I’m fed up with that sheeny and his anarchist theories. I really am, old chap. One can’t talk to him two minutes without his beginning to mock and scoff at all we hold sacred—our country, our faith, our past. I really was beginning to feel downright sick and afraid, Bologa!” And after a minute’s silence, he added: “You know, if I had to spend much time in his company I might discover some fine day that I had lost all my patriotic sentiments.”
“Sentiments that are genuine should resist any onslaught!” said Apostol dejectedly.
“That’s what they say, but in point of fact nothing resists for ever,” smiled Varga. “You yourself told me that once, when we were arguing in Budapest at my uncle’s, and I have never forgotten it. A drop of water can wear down a rock. And what about you: do you suppose you haven’t changed? Perhaps you yourself don’t realize it, but I, who shared the same room with you for nearly two months and had to put up with your weird behaviour—just you ask me, old chap! If my uncle, who was as fond of you as if you had been his own son, met you to-day, he would not recognize you, Bologa, really and truly! I repeat, perhaps you are not conscious of it, perhaps …”
Apostol Bologa seemed to read a hidden challenge in the hussar’s words. He answered with hostility, but also with a gravity in which struggled the desire to bare his soul, to lay it in the palm of his hand and to bear it aloft, proudly and confidently like a chalice, in the sight of all.
“I know perfectly well that I have changed. How can I help knowing it when the change was achieved in anguish, as if I had been born again? But it is as a result of that very change that I have acquired the real natural sentiments, as you called them just now. Only as a result of that change, Varga.”
The hussar was disconcerted. Bologa’s tone left no doubt as to his hostility, so he said in a low, dry voice, leaning his back against the door of the compartment and looking at Bologa intently:
“Bologa, it seems to me that your sentiments are unnatural.… Be careful!”
“Are you threatening me ?” asked Apostol ironically.
“Your sentiments are leading you straight into the arms of the enemy.”
“Which enemy?” repeated Bologa mockingly.
“The enemy of our country, no matter who he is!” retorted Varga a little more sharply. “At this minute you, my friend, are a deserter in thought and feeling!”
Apostol gave a slight start, then he said quickly, almost passionately, taking hold of Varga’s sleeve and staring intently into his eyes:
“Listen, Varga. Not long ago you boasted that you’d always keep a heart under that military uniform of yours. Put aside your casuistic reasoning and tell me what would you do if, for example, you happened to belong to the Russian Army and they sent you to fight the Hungarians, who had come to free you?”
“Stop, stop … you’ve got it wrong, old fellow!” stammered the lieutenant, reddening. “First comes our country …”
“Don’t beg the question,” insisted Bologa triumphantly. “Answer honestly! In such cases there cannot be two answers.”
Varga was silent. The question, and especially Bologa’s courage, embarrassed him. At last he said hesitatingly:
“There is one law for all and one duty to which we are bound by oath. If anyone attempts to judge these through the prism of sentimental selfishness, then …”
“Law, duty, oath, are of value only until you impose upon yourself a crime against your conscience!” interrupted Apostol quickly. “No duty on earth has the right to trample on a man’s soul, but if it tries to all the same, then …”
Bologa broke off abruptly with a vague gesture which might mean everything or nothing. Varga, taken aback, stammered with wide eyes:
“Then my suspicions … So you have thoughts of desertion?”
“Thoughts?” murmured Apostol with a strange smile. “Thoughts are changeable, Varga! But in my innermost being I have a deep conviction, and if it bids me go over to the enemy, that is to say your enemy, I shan’t hesitate a minute to do my real duty. And I am sure you others, if you judged honestly and without prejudice, would say I was right and would approve what I had done. I am sure that you, yourself, deep down in your heart …”
“No, no, Bologa, you are quite mistaken!” Varga, now having recovered himself, said dryly. “I’d never approve! I deprecate crime!”
“You would not?” queried Apostol with real surprise, adding immediately in a jesting tone: “You may rest assured that I won’t ask for your approval. At most, if I happened to have to pass through your se
ctor, and if I had the bad luck to meet you … perhaps then there might be a question of it.… But suppose it did happen, who knows what turn the conversation might take!”
“God grant you do no such thing, Bologa, for your sake!” replied the lieutenant gravely and threateningly. “I would arrest you, I would even shoot you if you tried to resist—in spite of your having been my friend!”
“Don’t excite yourself!” came from Bologa, now again derisive. “I’ll avoid your sector as I would the plague.… Now are you satisfied?”
“You may be joking, Bologa, but I mean …”
“I am not joking at all,” retorted Apostol, becoming suddenly defiant.
Lieutenant Varga felt personally much irritated at the things he had been compelled to listen to, and Bologa’s serenity and positiveness infuriated him. The thought of denouncing him actually crossed his mind—he would get the punishment he deserved that way. But police work was repugnant to him. Also, he reflected, they had been too intimate friends not so very long ago for them to fall out on things which, after all, were Bologa’s own private business. Probably, if one could see into the minds of all officers, one would be pretty horrified at what one discovered. Most of them, of course, hid their thoughts, whereas Bologa at least was sincere.
“That’s all nonsense, old chap!” Varga resumed, after a pause, in a changed voice and with assumed cheeriness. “We’d far better get along to General Karg and see if we can wangle some sick-leave!”
“That’s just what it is, nonsense!” smiled Apostol, softened. “All human words are mere nonsense in the crises of life.”
Varga led the way down the dirty corridor flooded with young sunshine. The train had just left a curve and the coach rocked as if it meant to topple over. The Hussar lieutenant clung to the wall with his hands, cursing furiously, but Bologa, only a few steps behind, walked boldly and easily as on a footpath.
III
They passed through a coach crammed full of soldiers and civilians all mixed up together. Peasants with scared faces congested the narrow corridor, so that they might keep an eye on their bags and bundles. They spoke little and in low voices, as if they were afraid of someone overhearing them. In the comer nearest to the officers’ coach a Rumanian priest, tall, thin, with a scanty little goatee beard, and poorly clad, was talking dejectedly with three peasants who, to judge from their appearance, were Hungarians.
Apostol, pushing his way through the crowd, heard the Rumanian language as he was passing behind the priest, and, looking back for a second but without stopping, seemed to glimpse a face he knew. Because of the congestion he had no time to look round again, but the face of the priest lingered in his mind, and he kept on asking himself:
“Who can he be and where have I met him?”
In the next coach travelled General Karg. Here the corridor was encumbered with officers of all ranks, gossiping together and each one waiting for a lucky chance to exchange a word unofficially with the general. The coffee-coloured curtains of His Excellency’s compartment were drawn and the adjutant had just come out, on his own initiative, to ask the gentlemen in the corridor to be quieter and avoid the danger of ruffling His Excellency’s temper. Just at that moment Varga arrived. He took the adjutant aside and whispered:
“Gross told us that the old man wanted to see us—me and Bologa.… Do remind him, like a good chap!”
The adjutant shook hands with Bologa, whom he had not met since that stormy interview with the general, and then entered the general’s compartment sighing despondently:
“We’ll try.”
Five minutes later the door was half pushed back, the adjutant half leant out and called out pleasantly:
“Bologa, come along, please, His Excellency wishes …”
He met Varga’s questioning eyes and shrugged slightly, his face apologetic, as who would say: “Them’s my orders!”
General Karg was in high spirits and excellent temper. He had at last succeeded, with great trouble, in getting himself recommended for the Order of Maria Theresa. He was sitting near the window with his short legs comfortably stretched out, his swarthy face turned towards Apostol Bologa, who had entered and saluted.
“Well, are you all right again?” asked the general carelessly, holding out his beringed hand and giving him a long look.
Bologa answered with a hesitating smile. His face was yellow, drawn, his lips colourless, only his eyes burnt, fed by an inward fire. The general again looked him up and down and then offered him a seat at his side. On the seat opposite His Excellency sat a colonel with angular features, who was a stranger, and a thin-faced major, whose eyes sparkled with intelligence. The adjutant, again hearing too much noise in the corridor, slipped out to warn the gentlemen out there anew that the noise might possibly anger His Excellency.
The general asked Bologa all sorts of questions: about his wound, about the hospitals at which he had been, about his recovery, etc.; but while Bologa answered he saw all the time an unspoken question in the general’s eyes, which roused his defiance just as Varga’s had done a little while before. Otherwise Karg, by the tone of his voice and the kindness which softened his harsh face, showed a real interest in him, an almost natural interest. At last the expected question came, but put in a joking, friendly form:
“Well, you see, the world has not turned to dust because you are here with us?”
Apostol saw clearly in the eyes of the general that he expected him to answer with a brief “No”. That was why he could not help one second’s hesitation, which, however, almost immediately died of its own accord. Then he spoke with a temerity heightened by the clearness of his voice:
“I have never been a coward, Excellency, that is why I will confess to you now that in my soul a world has turned to dust!”
The fat, beringed fingers tugged nervously at the straggly moustache, and the broad eyebrows were tightly drawn together as the general asked, rather bewildered:
“What do you mean? What world has turned to dust?”
Bologa smiled so serenely that the general’s frown was transformed into an impatient curiosity and his hand dropped again quietly on to the arm-rest.
“I once read somewhere, Excellency,” explained Apostol in the same clear voice, “that the heart of the human embryo in the first few weeks of gestation is situated not in the body but in the head, in the middle of the brain, and that not till a later stage does it move down lower, separating itself from the brain for ever. How wonderful it would be, Excellency, if the heart and brain had remained one, entwined, so that the heart would never do what the brain forbade, and, more especially, the brain would never act against the advice of the heart!”
The general stared at him a few minutes and then looked at the others and burst into a hearty laugh, opening his mouth wide, his moustache bristling and his whole face wrinkling up and looking for all the world like the shell of a bad walnut.
“Damned interesting!” he mumbled, laughing.
Then, mastering his laughter with difficulty and with a visible embarrassment at having given way so freely to his mirth, he resumed his ordinary gravity, and then related to the colonel that Bologa had begged him not to send him to the Rumanian front and that, in spite of this, he, the general, had forgiven him because he knew him to be a very capable and conscientious officer, although now he saw that he was an obstinate one as well. The colonel listened respectfully until the general stopped speaking, and then as respectfully remarked:
“Of course, I don’t approve, Excellency, the law does not allow me to, but I can put myself into the lieutenant’s place and I understand his bitterness. It is, indeed, regrettable that those in power should not have taken general precautions in this respect, so as to avoid such delicate situations, in the interest of the combative quality of the Army.”
Apostol shuddered as if the colonel’s words were needles being stuck into his heart, because to-day he no longer wanted to be understood; on the contrary, he wanted motives for hatred and defian
ce to fan and feed the flame of his conviction.
The general seemed surprised for a moment, but presently answered, convinced and with some pride in his voice:
“Obviously, obviously, it is so! From a humane point of view, of course. But if ‘the powers that be’ did not think of such a possibility? I can’t take all the responsibilities. At best I can only make things easier in certain cases, as in the case of this lieutenant, for example. Yes! Without doubt we must make things easier. As he is still weak from sickness, I want to protect him from the hardships of the front, and we’ll use him in a service which does not entail great fatigue. Look here, we’ll transfer him to the ammunitions! There you are, that’s what we’ll do. For we are humane—we, in our Army! Where else would a commander worry his head to pander to such scruples? … What do you think, major? Have you ever come across examples of such humaneness in any Army since the beginning of history? And it is us that our enemies accuse of barbarity! What a world! What injustice!”
Just then the adjutant slipped in again. The general cut short his reflections and ordered:
“Note that Lieutenant Bologa is being transferred to the ammunition column!”
While the adjutant was getting out his note-book, Apostol Bologa looked at them all in turn beseechingly. On all faces he saw compassion veiled by different kinds of smiles. He felt humble and small, though hatred seethed in his soul. He had wanted to provoke indignation and lo! he had found pity and understanding. He watched the adjutant’s pencil travel swiftly along the paper and suddenly exclaimed:
“Excellency, I would much rather take charge of my battery again.”
“Never mind,” murmured the general protectingly and gaily. “You must recuperate and get back your strength in an easier service where the dangers are not so great. I am glad you are still keen on the front, but for the time being I am compelled, in your interest, to oppose your wish and to spare you.”
Forest of the Hanged Page 11
